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I cupped his smooth cheek. “You were right on time. You saved us. Twice in two days.”
“Daddy, what’s Prague?” Kaylee asked.
Harrison whipped his head around. “Where did you hear that?”
She pointed at the man on the ground. “He said it. And something about brothers.”
Harrison turned to him with death in his eyes. “Sweetie? Go to your room. I need some privacy.”
As soon as she was gone, Harrison nudged the attacker with his foot to roll him onto his back. Then Harrison stepped on the gunshot wound in his chest. The man screamed.
“You failed, asshole,” Harrison snarled at him. “If you tell me why you’re here, I might let you live. But you’d better tell me quick. You’re losing a lot of blood.”
“Failed?” The man laughed. “We did not fail. A fake helicopter company? You believed that would work?”
Harrison glanced at me. And for the first time since I had met him, I saw that he was afraid.
“We are the ones who hired you!” the man said, spitting blood up on his chest in the process. “You fell right into our trap!”
I realized what he meant.Oh no. Archer and Jordy!
His dying laughter echoed through the room.
37
Archer
I tried to act natural as I piloted the helicopter into the air and began my normal tour duties. I pointed out the Deniz Kenari Milli Park, which was beautiful when viewed from the sky. There was the Baku Boulevard, which would be especially beautiful when lit up at night. The three flame towers, the famous fountain square, the Ateshgah fire temple. We passed over Highland Park, which featured a war memorial dedicated to those killed by the Soviet Army in 1990. I left that part out of the tour.
I was well-practiced at the tour. That was part of the reason we had arrived early, after all. But underneath my cheerful exterior, I was more tense than I had ever been in my life.
How could I not be, with the Chechen devil sitting right behind me?
He didn’t speak much during the tour. He grunted and acknowledged what I said, but didn’t offer any of his own comments. When we flew over the old city, the little televisions on the seat backs displayed an overlay to show where the Formula One course ran. Neither of them seemed very interested in that, to my surprise.
Of course not. They’re here to meet Daniel Ricardo. The tour is probably just an annoyance to them.
I felt bad for the bodyguard. He was just collateral damage in all of this. I consoled myself with the assumption that he was every bit as evil as Kadyrovic was. Perhaps even more so. Kadyrovic might have given the orders for all the torturing he did, but the bodyguards who accompanied him everywhere were the ones who followed through on the acts. I shivered to think of what the hooded man might have done in his service.
“Our tour finishes with a pass over the north of the city,” I said into the headset receiver. “You’ll want to see this. There’s an old meteor crater that can only be seen from above two thousand feet. After that, we will head back to the office, where Ricardo should be waiting.”
“Yes, good,” Kadyrovic said.
I began the flight toward that direction. There was no meteor crater visible from the sky, but there was a dense forest where I would be able to parachute down to. And with any luck, the helicopter crash would ignite some of the trees and cause everything to burn just a little bit longer, obfuscating the trickery we had pulled here. I ran through the plan in my head. A five-minute flight to the location. A small ridge would obscure us from the city, ensuring that nobody saw my last-minute escape. I would jam the flight stick forward, throwing us into a vortex ring state. There would be no recovery from that, even if one of these two was a trained pilot. As soon as it began, I would grab the chute from underneath the seat, strap it over my chest, and jump out the door.
It was all so simple.
Yet as we flew out to the location, I began to doubt myself. I thought about Trish’s mugging yesterday. I considered Kadyrovic’s actions since he arrived in the city four days prior. He hadn’t done much of anything, according to Harrison’s notes. Driving around the city several times a day. Walking through the market.
My instincts were screaming at me:something is wrong.
I reached into my pocket for my cell phone. It was powered off, to ensure that my SIM card didn’t record my GPS movements during the flight or the escape afterward. A necessary precaution. I held down the button to power it on, not caring that it would ping my location to a radio tower. That was fine; I could turn it back off if everything was in order.
I held the phone between my legs where the guys behind me couldn’t see. “The crater should be visible in just a minute,” I said on the radio. The phone finished booting up and the home screen appeared.
Ten missed calls.
Fifteen text messages.
